Ukraine war: Putin’s forces launch 1,000 drones across frontline

Seeing the military patrol handing out call-up papers on the outskirts of Kyiv, one man slipped into a nearby store. Another refused to even stop for the officers. Others, however, quietly obliged.

“Now, as far as I know, most of the queues [at draft offices] are people who want to obtain some sort of exemption [from fighting],” said the 36-year-old, who was accompanied by Reuters on a recent draft patrol in the Ukrainian capital.

China’s defence ministry said that Russian vessels arrived in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, for the “Joint Sea-2024” exercises in the waters and airspace around the city throughout this week.

Treason cases were rare in Russia 30 years ago, with only a handful brought annually. In the past decade and especially since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, however, the number has soared, along with espionage prosecutions.

They are ensnaring citizens and foreigners alike. Recent victims range from Kremlin critics and independent journalists to veteran scientists working with countries that Moscow considers friendly.

One rights group counted over 100 known treason cases in 2023, with probably another 100 that nobody knows about.

An unidentified individual threw a grenade at a military draft office in the western Ukrainian town of Busk overnight, causing an explosion but not hurting anyone, police said on Monday.

The police said in a statement they were investigating the incident, which comes as Ukraine is stepping up its effort to draft civilians into the armed forces more than 28 months since Russia invaded.

Police in the western Lviv region said the explosion damaged the facade of the draft office and its windows. The individual had fled after throwing the grenade, they said.

There have been persistent cases of men fleeing Ukraine to avoid military service throughout the war. In recent months there have also been Ukrainian media reports of violence directed at draft offices and draft officers.

Asked if they were concerned, Ukraine‘s military told Reuters that maintaining public trust was an “important component of the activities of the (armed forces), without which it will be extremely difficult to achieve victory over the enemy.”

When Maksim Kolker’s phone rang at 6 a.m., and the voice on the other end said his father had been arrested, he thought it was a scam to extort money. A day earlier, he had taken his father, prominent Russian physicist Dmitry Kolker, to the hospital in his native Novosibirsk, when his advanced pancreatic cancer had suddenly worsened.

The phone kept ringing and Kolker kept hanging up until finally his father called to confirm the grim news. The elder Kolker had been charged with treason, the family later learned, a crime that is probed and prosecuted in absolute secrecy in Russia and punished with long prison terms.

Treason cases have been rare in Russia in the last 30 years, with a handful annually. But since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, they have skyrocketed, along with espionage prosecutions, ensnaring citizens and foreigners alike, regardless of their politics.

Ukraine needs 25 Patriot air defence systems to fully defend its airspace and protect the entire country from Russian missile attacks, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

The Ukrainian leader added that he also wants Western partners to send more F-16 warplanes than those already pledged.

In his first news conference since returning from a trip to the United States, Mr Zelensky said he is ready to work with Donald Trump if he wins November’s American election.

“I am not afraid” of that prospect, Mr Zelensky said, adding he is convinced that most Republicans support Ukraine in its war with Russia.

On Sunday, Mr Zelensky said he was “appalled” by the attempt to assassinate Mr Trump, and wished him a speedy recovery.

Western support is crucial for Ukraine as it tries to beat back Russia‘s bigger and better-equipped invading army.

Mr Zelensky has proved talented at persuading friendly countries to provide ever more support, even if he does not always get what he wants immediately.

A six-month delay in military assistance from the US, the biggest single contributor to Ukraine, meant that Kyiv’s forces “lost the initiative” on the front line, Mr Zelensky said.

Struggling with manpower, overwhelming odds and uneven international assistance, Ukraine hopes to find a strategic edge against Russia in an abandoned warehouse.

An ecosystem of laboratories in hundreds of secret workshops is leveraging innovation to create a robot army that Ukraine hopes will kill Russian troops and save its own wounded soldiers and civilians.

Defense startups across Ukraine — about 250 according to industry estimates — are creating the killing machines at secret locations that typically look like rural car repair shops.

Ukraine‘s navy said on Monday that Moscow’s last naval patrol ship had left Russian-occupied Crimea, “most likely” to rebase elsewhere after Kyiv’s concerted military campaign to attack the Black Sea peninsula as it battles Russian invasion.

Though it has no major warships at its disposal, Ukraine has used missiles and naval drones to inflict significant damage to the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which has long been headquartered in Sevastopol on the peninsula seized by Moscow in 2014.

Vice-Admiral Oleksiy Neizhpapa, Ukraine‘s navy chief, told Reuters earlier this month that Russia had been forced to rebase nearly all its combat-ready warships from occupied Crimea.

“The last patrol ship of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation is bolting from our Crimea just now. Remember this day,” Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk said on Facebook.

Asked to clarify whether this was a permanent move, Pletenchuk told Reuters: “Most likely, this is a transition between bases”, adding that Moscow did not usually send ships to the open sea for no reason.

He said the vessel’s designation was Project 1135.

Russian authorities have not responded to requests for comment in the past about Ukrainian claims of advances in the Black Sea.

Over the past decade, Russia has seen a sharp increase in treason and espionage cases.

Lawyers and experts say prosecutions for these high crimes started to grow after 2014 – the year when Russia illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula. That’s also when Moscow backed a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine.

The number of these cases in Russia spiked significantly after the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, urged the security services to “harshly suppress the actions of foreign intelligence services [and] promptly identify traitors, spies and saboteurs”. The crackdown has ensnared scientists and journalists, as well as ordinary citizens.

An unidentified individual threw a grenade at a military draft office in the western Ukrainian town of Busk overnight, causing an explosion but not hurting anyone, police said on Monday.

The police said in a statement they were investigating the incident, which comes as Ukraine is stepping up its effort to draft civilians into the armed forces more than 28 months since Russia invaded.

Police in the western Lviv region said the explosion damaged the facade of the draft office and its windows. The individual had fled after throwing the grenade, they said.

There have been persistent cases of men fleeing Ukraine to avoid military service throughout the war. In recent months there have also been Ukrainian media reports of violence directed at draft offices and draft officers.

Asked if they were concerned, Ukraine‘s military told Reuters that maintaining public trust was an “important component of the activities of the (armed forces), without which it will be extremely difficult to achieve victory over the enemy.”